May 20, Townsville and Ayr

We spent most of the day in Townsville at the Reef HQ Aquarium. It's the world's largest living coral reef aquarium. It had a tunnel that went through the reef they had made there and lots of displays on the coral and the fish that live there. We went to a talk about the various sharks. Then we learned about coral. That was the most interesting. Our guide, Tom, told us what coral is and how it grows and reproduces. One of the questions was about the color of coral. In the pictures it's always bright reds and yellows and in the aquarium it's brownish and greenish. He explained that the photographers use lights to get the colored pictures. When sunlight goes through water it loses the spectrum. The first color to go is red, go deeper and lose orange, yellow and finally blue. Then everything looks black.

The aquarium also houses a turtle hospital. The rangers bring the turtles to them, some are injured, but most are floaters. Somehow they have gotten air under their shell, through a collapsed lung or intestinal problems and can't dive down for food. In the big tank was one who was very skinny when he came in, but now was eating and gaining weight and not floating. He had a collapsed lung. In the hospital were several Green Sea Turtles, a Flatback, and a couple of of others that I can't remember. There are 7 species of sea turtles and 6 lives in the waters around Australia.

After the aquarium, we walked down The Strand along the beach. It was just beautiful there. We stopped for a late lunch on the waterfront and had fish tacos and fish and chips. It was fancier than we had had before. The fish was cut into long pieces and looked like long fish sticks. The fish tacos were made from grilled local mackerel.

The next town down the road was Ayr. There were a couple of things we were going to see, but couldn't find and the visitors center was closed. We asked a lady walking by, but she had never heard of them. We did see the Carpet Snake sculpture. It's a totem for the local Aborigines. And we saw a diorama the Lions Club had made that explained how sugar is grown and refined and also about the building of the bridge across the river there.

Now we're in a rest area further down the road. The rest areas fill up fairly early. This one is a circular road with a toilet near the middle. The trailers and motorhomes and camper vans are parked like wagons around a campfire.

Pictures - Different kinds of coral, Lionfish, Fish and coral, Sick turtle in a tank, Samson on The Strand, Carpet Snake sculpture